Dear Mary: Was I wrong to tell my friend’s boyfriend he was snoring?

Q. I have had an email inviting me to an old girls’ reunion, class of 1976. The organiser suggested we ‘reply all’ so that everyone could see who else was able to attend. Now I have had no fewer than four super-excited emails from other old girls saying they can’t wait till the reunion, so can we meet up separately before that? I can hardly fit in seeing my family and close friends, let alone people I haven’t seen for 45 years, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

– Name and address withheld

A. Email each of the four women saying you too can’t wait to see them ASAP. However, a friend who has also organised an old girls’ reunion says it would be very bad form. She says planning an OGR is just like planning a theatrical production and the whole drama of the group surprise would be undermined if any of the participants had ‘sneak previews’ of each other before the day. You will find the urgency for separate meetings quickly diminishes when you meet at the big event and everyone has the chance to cover what old ground there is to cover.

Q. A close friend has an attractive – but much older – boyfriend. He kindly allowed her to invite a group of us to stay for a few days’ hill walking. I was sitting in the drawing room with him after lunch while the others went out. We were both reading by the fire when he fell asleep and began to snore loudly and, it has to be said, very unattractively. When I heard the others coming back, I didn’t want him to be humiliated so I shook him awake and told him he had been snoring. He wasn’t the same towards me after that and I feel I handled it badly. What should I have done?

– J.Z., London W4

A. You should have rung his landline or mobile from your own mobile. You would then have had the excuse to shake him awake without mentioning the snoring. If he called the number back to see who had been ringing, you could have said you had been sitting on your phone and must have inadvertently made a ‘butt call’.

Q. Is there a tactful way to discourage someone from taking too long to say things? I hardly ever ring an old friend because I can never get her off the phone once we start talking. She includes every detail of her day. Other mutual friends are having the same difficulty with her.

– M.M., London W11

A. It has become fashionable in New York to have weekly sessions with counsellors purely for the purpose of clearing one’s mundane inner decks so as not to bore friends. A number of young people have recently set up as life coaches, so why not suggest that she help one of these get started by having weekly sessions?